Remembering Gregory Wittine, advocate for disability accommodations in Scouting
Wittine died this month at age 67. He leaves behind a powerful legacy.
When a friend shared with me last week the obituary for Gregory Wittine, I have to admit his name did not ring a bell.
Which might be forgiven, considering I was not around for his time in the limelight (the 1970s), and because “his name was lost to popular memory,” as The New York Times put it.
But as I read about Wittine’s life, I quickly realized we would be making a serious mistake if we collectively forgot about his contributions to Scouting.
Wittine grew up on Long Island, and as a kid the Boy Scouts defined his life. He quickly set his sights on the eagle scout rank, and earned every necessary badge. But due to his disability—cerebral palsy—he did not finish the requirements until age 23, well past the age 18 cutoff.
The BSA denied him the award for that simple reason, but he was not satisfied to let it go. He petitioned the national organization to revise its policies and allow scouts with disabilities more time to earn the eagle scout rank.
Wittine’s campaign catapulted him into national news media in 1978, and spurred considerable support from the public. The BSA relented, “dropping ‘all age restrictions’ for ‘severely handicapped’ scouts while still requiring that they earn the same badges as other Eagle Scouts,” according to the NYT.
That meant Wittine would finally become an eagle scout. The achievement earned him an invitation to the White House, where he met First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
But Wittine’s advocacy and the resulting policy change also opened the door for thousands of other scouts with disabilities who would go on to earn Scouting’s highest rank over the following decades.
Wittine lived a relatively quiet life after that, earning an associate degree from Nassau Community College and working as a volunteer with the Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He died on March 5 in a nursing home, at age 67.
The NYT reports that he “was buried in a Boy Scout uniform with a sash bearing his merit badges.” I encourage you to read the rest of his story and obituary at the link below.
